CUMBERLAND — While there’s no current plan for a data center at the former Luke Mill site, Allegany County officials participated in closed talks for such a facility to be built on the old paper plant property, Kit Pepper Lescallette said.
When the mill, owned by Verso Corp., closed in 2019, nearly 700 jobs were lost. Since then, county officials have pondered possible economic development opportunities for the site.
At the Allegany County commissioners meeting Thursday, Lescallette said she obtained via the Maryland Public Information Act an email that documents proof of the earlier data center plan.
The July 17, 2025, email is from Off The Grid Energy Works to the United States Department of Agriculture and copied to Allegany County Economic Development Specialist Adam Strott and Economic and Community Development Director Jeff Barclay.
It states that the company “executed an option to lease land on the West Virginia side of the mill property to establish a hybrid electric co-generation plant, firing pipeline gas complemented by wood gasification fuel (and) our electric and thermal energy buyer will be a data center to be located on the Maryland side of the mill site.”
Although there’s no apparent plan for a data center now, “it was the intent at least until July 17 of 2025,” Lescallette said.
“So as we have these conversations going forward, I think everybody needs to understand what we’re dealing with,” she said.
Lescallette for several months has spoken at commissioner meetings of the county’s lack of transparency on various issues.
In February, she warned the commissioners about making decisions in private.
“Secret agreements made outside public meetings are easily challenged and thrown out in court,” Lescallette said and added such activity harms the county financially. “There are liabilities associated with this.”
At that time, Allegany County Commissioner President Dave Caporale said, “Everything that we’ve had has been run through a public meeting.”
Last month, Commissioner Bill Atkinson said the county has had “conversations with a few” data centers.
“It’s not a big enough site for the ones that we’ve talked with,” he said. “When we provide them with information about the site, then they are typically not interested anymore.”
While the county owns 60 acres of the former mill property in West Virginia, and roughly 200 acres in Allegany County, only about 40 acres on the Maryland side would be developed, he said at that time.
“They’re not contiguous because the river separates them,” Atkinson said. “It’s not 100 contiguous acres that you could lay out something there.”